


lay me down and close my eyes

by Damkianna



Category: Jeremiah (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Casual Sex, Communication Failure, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Extra Treat, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Set during 1.18. Coffee can't actually sober anybody up. Markus just needs to sleep it off—if he can get to sleep at all. Jeremiah decides to help.
Relationships: Markus Alexander/Jeremiah
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	lay me down and close my eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eirenical (chibi1723)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi1723/gifts).



> Everybody who's into this pairing gets to write a fic about drunk!Markus during 1.18, right? :D I couldn't resist ... several of your prompts, eirenical, so I just hope you enjoy this little stack of them, with some Yuleporn tossed in on the side. Happy Yuletide!

Coffee isn't going to cut it.

Markus is aware of this, dimly. He drinks the coffee anyway, because Jeremiah made it for him.

The mug seems tiny, slippery. He's drunk out of a lot of mugs, but for some reason he can't figure out how to hold this one properly. It's funny, and he laughs—spills a little coffee, and can't stop laughing even as he's trying to lick up the drips of coffee going down the side.

Erin and Jeremiah are looking at him. And they're not laughing at all. Which is weird, Markus thinks merrily, considering how funny this is.

"Yeah, we can't send him to a Council meeting like this," Erin says, after a minute.

"Probably not a good idea, no," Jeremiah agrees.

"I'll tell them we have to push it back," Erin decides, and stands. "You—see if you can get him to lie down. Sleep it off."

"Me," Jeremiah repeats. "Me? Hey, wait a second—" but Erin's already striding out the door, gone.

"She's gone," Markus tells Jeremiah, and drinks some more coffee. Hardly spills at all, this time.

"Yeah, I noticed that, thanks," Jeremiah mutters.

Markus hums, and takes another swallow of coffee. He likes coffee. Not just because it can keep him awake, sharp, when he needs it the most. Because of the experience of it, too. Getting to hold a hot mug, feeling the warmth seep into his fingers, and the way that very first sip tastes on his tongue. It always makes him stop, even if it's only for a second, to appreciate it—to _feel_ it, no matter where he is or what else is going on.

That's starting to get more and more important to him, these days. The reminder to pay attention, to be present within himself. To feel things.

"Okay, all right, come on," Jeremiah says, and reaches out for the mug. Just to take it from Markus's hands, that's all; but for a moment, their fingers are overlapping around it.

Jeremiah's hands are warm. Warm, steady, strong. And Markus lets his eyes fall shut for a second, and _feels_ it.

"Man, I took that coffee away from you because you need to sleep," Jeremiah says, "but I would not recommend trying to do it in here."

Markus blinks at him. Oh. Jeremiah doesn't understand what he was doing. He should explain—

Except Jeremiah's already moving, coming around to Markus's side of the table. "Up you get," he's adding, "up you get, here we go," and then he's gripping Markus by the arms again, lifting him out of his seat. Warm, steady, strong—basically the only thing in the world that is, Markus thinks, or at least that's how it seems sometimes. Especially right now, because the room's still showing a marked tendency to dip and sway around him without warning.

Even if it weren't, though, he might have hung onto Jeremiah's shoulders anyway. Just—to feel.

"You are really not as light as you look," Jeremiah huffs, hitching Markus a little closer against him as they go around a corner. "Must be that gigantic goddamn brain of yours, I guess."

"Hm," Markus says into the side of Jeremiah's throat, and closes his eyes again.

It feels like it takes kind of a long time to get to his rooms, but Markus doesn't mind. It's nice. Being held up, knowing Jeremiah's got him. Usually Markus can't afford to let himself be held up by anybody—can't afford to let himself be seen needing anybody to hold him up. Bad for morale, that kind of thing.

But it's all right when it's Jeremiah. It must be all right when it's Jeremiah, because Markus isn't sure he could bear it if it weren't.

And then, even though it took a long time, it still feels sudden to be faced with his own door. His own door, and his own quarters, and his own bed.

"There you go," Jeremiah murmurs, and the world tilts around Markus again but this time it's supposed to, because Jeremiah's easing him down. He lands on the edge of the bed, and keeps going, Jeremiah's hands steadying on his shoulders, until he's thumped down against his pillow with a sigh.

"Thanks," he tells the pillow.

"Sure thing," Jeremiah says above him, mild.

"It's okay," Markus adds after a second.

The room is quiet.

"What's okay?" Jeremiah says at last.

Markus turns his face into the pillow a little, and closes his eyes again, and sighs—really sighs, one big long slow breath, like everything he's been holding in all this time could get out that way if he just gave it a chance.

"You're going to leave now," he says. "It's okay. You have things to do. I understand."

Silence again. And in a minute, he's going to hear the sound of the door, and Jeremiah saying something nice—or something smart-assed; even odds, with Jeremiah—and then Jeremiah's going to be gone.

Except the only noise that comes is a scrape. A scrape, like the legs of a chair against the floor.

"Well, see, the thing is," Jeremiah says, "I don't know if you were paying attention back there, but Erin didn't just tell me to get you to lie down. I'm supposed to make sure you sleep it off, too."

Markus squeezes his eyes shut tighter and bites his tongue, and he can feel his face, his chest, get hot with gratitude.

"So I figure that means I better stick around until I'm sure you're following directions. Just so I don't get in trouble, you understand."

"Can't have that," Markus hears himself say, half into the pillow, muffled, and then listens to Jeremiah laugh: just a little, a breath through his nose.

But Jeremiah doesn't laugh enough, Markus thinks dizzily, so even the little ones count.

He tries hard to fall asleep. He really does.

Half because he wants to. He'd _love_ to. He hardly ever gets a whole night's sleep—there's always something to do, questions to answer or problems to solve. But now he's handily incapacitated himself: he couldn't be trusted to answer questions or solve problems, even if he wanted to. It's his responsibility, for the good of Thunder Mountain and everyone inside it, to take the time to sober up.

He should probably consider getting drunk more often. Once or twice a year, half a day at a time. That couldn't cause any major disasters, could it? He could rest, and it would be okay. It wouldn't be selfish, if it were the only way he could do his job again.

(There's something wrong with that chain of logic, somewhere along the line. But he can't quite pinpoint where it is.)

But he doesn't just want to sleep for himself. He wants to sleep for Jeremiah, too. Jeremiah's waiting on Markus to—to follow directions, to do as he's been told. Jeremiah's looking after Markus, and he's trying to do it well, trying to do it right, or else he wouldn't have stayed. And Markus wants him to be able to feel that he has. Markus wants him to be happy.

So he lies there, and he keeps his eyes shut. He tries, blurrily, to stop thinking about Jeremiah. To stop thinking about drinking alone with the lights shut off—he'd been thinking about Jeremiah then, too, which was why it had seemed like such a marvelous and delightful thing that Jeremiah had come in and found him there.

But never mind, he's—he's not thinking about that. He's not thinking about that, and he's not thinking about the Council; he's not thinking about getting shot, or about Theo, or about every single thing he's ever done wrong. He's sleeping. Or he will be soon. He's going to go to sleep. All he has to do is lie here and try.

He keeps hoping it'll work for about the first hour or so. After that, he decides it's enough to keep his eyes closed, to breathe deep and slow and not move. That's practically the same as being asleep anyway, except for the part where he's awake. It's fine.

His head feels heavy, too tight. It doesn't hurt, not exactly; but there's the shadow of something that'll be a headache once it arrives, creeping just a little out of reach in the distance. Hangover, he supposes. That'll be fun.

But he _is_ resting, even if he's not asleep. That has to count for something. And he probably looks asleep, from where Jeremiah's sitting. Unless Jeremiah's already left; but no, Markus would've heard the door. So he'd better stay put. And as long as he doesn't give himself away—

"Pipe down over there, will you?"

Markus blinks into the dimness, and can't resist turning to look over his shoulder, eyebrows raised.

"I can hear the gears grinding in there," Jeremiah explains, not unkindly, encompassing Markus's head with a vague wave, "from all the way over here."

Markus swallows, and looks at him. Jeremiah looks tired, too. He's still sitting in the chair he dragged over, stretched out in a long relaxed curve, feet on the floor. And he's looking back at Markus, head tilted, eyes narrowed—that way he does when he's seeing more than he's supposed to.

Markus looks away.

"Sorry," he says. "I'm—sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Jeremiah says. "Go the fuck to sleep."

 _I can't_ , Markus doesn't say. _I can't—god, I wish I could, I wish I could. But there's just so much, and it never ever stops. I can't make it stop._

He turns, shifts onto his back; covers his face with his hands, and makes himself breathe.

"I'm fine now," he says, once he can—once he's pretty sure it'll come out even, level. Convincing. "You should go. I'll be fine."

"Sure," Jeremiah agrees, mild. "Oh, hey, I had this thing I wanted to ask you, by the way."

Questions, answers. Problems to solve. Markus bites his lip. Even Jeremiah—

"Of course," he makes himself say.

"Yeah, it's just that I was wondering," Jeremiah says. "You got a bridge you want to sell me?"

Markus blinks, behind his hands. Moves them out of the way, and looks over.

Jeremiah's watching him, mouth flat and skeptical. And not, Markus thinks, fooled in the least.

"Bullshit, you're fine," Jeremiah says gently. "People who are fine don't drink alone in the dark, Markus."

"It's all right," Markus argues. "I just need to figure out—"

"Let me stop you right there," Jeremiah says, cutting him off unrepentantly. He pauses, shifts up out of the chair and drags it closer with a skittering rasp and then settles back down onto the seat again. "That's exactly the issue, and you don't even know it, do you?"

"It's not that I don't see that you've set a trap for me," Markus observes thoughtfully. "It's just that I really can't think of any way to answer that that isn't 'know what?'—"

"And there you go again," Jeremiah says, shaking his head a little, chiding. "You, all of you in Thunder Mountain—you're still used to sitting around _thinking_ about your problems. Out there in the world, though, that stopped cutting it a long time ago. Everybody knows that if you've got a problem, then you better do something about it."

And then, before Markus can so much as ask what exactly that's supposed to mean, Jeremiah reaches out with perfect casualness and sets his hand on Markus's dick.

Through his pants, obviously, because Markus hadn't been anywhere near coordinated enough to strip them off earlier. But Markus also hadn't pulled a blanket up over himself or anything, and he'd rolled over on his back to talk to Jeremiah, and it's—Jeremiah's just put his hand between Markus's legs and is leaving it there. It's a shock of heat and sensation, just the fact of the touch alone when Markus hadn't been expecting it, and Markus's breath catches in his throat.

"I," he says, inane, startled. "You," which isn't any better. "Jeremiah—"

"Yeah?" Jeremiah says.

His tone is easy and inquiring, like it's any old ordinary question; like he's not sure why Markus might have choked out his name in such a frankly embarrassing way.

And Markus is about to point out how ridiculous this is. That this can't happen, that it's impossible, that Jeremiah clearly just—set his hand on Markus's dick completely by mistake, which is fine, and now all he has to do is take it off again and they can carry on like this never happened.

But then Jeremiah moves. Jeremiah presses with his fingers, outlines a shape that's getting thicker, hotter, harder than it ought to—slides his palm along it, and oh, fuck, Markus thinks, head tipping back against the pillow.

He shouldn't be reacting to this. He shouldn't be encouraging it. He needs to tell Jeremiah to stop, that this isn't necessary. That whatever it is Jeremiah intends to do for Markus by—by—god, oh, god—

"Jeremiah," he hears himself say. " _Jeremiah_ , ah—"

"Like that, huh?" Jeremiah says, and rubs Markus a little harder with one hand, and catches two fingers of the other in the waist of Markus's pants.

And Markus can't do anything but move with the touch—move _into_ it, helpless, shameless, abruptly greedy.

God, that feels _fantastic_.

"Jeremiah," he says again, and reaches up unseeingly, fumbles for Jeremiah's shoulder; pulls himself up by it, awkward, still trying to roll his hips up into Jeremiah's hand at the same time, and gasps against Jeremiah's cheek when Jeremiah rewards him for this initiative with a harder squeeze and the sudden relief of his pants coming unfastened.

And then he gets it together enough to move his hand—to catch Jeremiah by the chin instead of the shoulder, and hold him there long enough to kiss him.

Jeremiah should be proud of him: he isn't even thinking about it, not really. He just wants to, and Jeremiah is right there in arm's reach, and Markus has reached out and taken hold of him and done it. Jeremiah's mouth is soft with surprise, and wet, and there's something startlingly gratifying about the sharp breath he draws in against Markus's lips.

But Jeremiah goes still after. Even his hands stop moving.

And that's probably not a good sign.

Markus eases away carefully, wetting his mouth absently and then wishing he hadn't, because it only makes him more aware of what he just did with it. He feels clumsy, self-conscious, an awkward gangly kid again—he really hasn't kissed that many people, and for all he knows that's just one more thing they do differently outside Thunder Mountain, one more thing he should have understood but doesn't, won't until it's too late to fix—

"Hey," Jeremiah says quietly, and raises his eyebrows; lifts a hand to tap Markus twice on the temple. "Gears."

"Right," Markus says, and exhales, not quite a laugh. "Sorry. I—" He clears his throat. "Was I not supposed to—"

Jeremiah's poised, a little too still, aggressively unreadable in the dimness.

"People don't always, that's all," he says, after a long moment. "You don't have to. Out there, making time with someone on the road, it's—no guarantees you're ever going to run across them twice, you know? So if you want to, and they want to, that's all you need to know. And if you don't want to, well." He shrugs, lopsided and too casual. "Tell them your gate doesn't swing that way, if you want to be polite."

"And if you don't?"

Jeremiah tilts his head, thoughtful. "Punch them, I guess."

Of course. "Well, in that case, I appreciate your not punching me," Markus says, and it even comes out creditably level, a little amused.

But Jeremiah doesn't laugh, and he doesn't start moving his hand again either. "It's not a bad thing," he says. "You just—don't have to."

"Right," Markus says. "Sorry," and god, now he's repeating himself. He swallows, and leans away, backward, onto his elbows. So he's not crowding Jeremiah so close anymore; so he can turn his face away a little.

It's going to be hard to come like this, hot-faced and stomach clenching, no matter how good Jeremiah's hands feel. But he has to try. He bites down on the wrong kind of laugh. Just one more responsibility: he _has_ to try, because Jeremiah's only doing this to help him—

The only warning he's got is the bracing little breath Jeremiah draws, the soft sound of it in the air.

And then there's a hand against his jaw, long strong fingers tipping his face around, and Jeremiah's kissing him.

Hard, at first. A little too hard, a little awkward. Determined; proving a point. But Markus makes a helpless sound into it anyway, and everything smooths out after that. Jeremiah kisses him slower, deeper, holding Markus's face just how he wants it and tonguing the curve of his lower lip, biting it, sucking on Markus's tongue.

The hand that's not on Markus's face starts moving again, so quick and light Markus almost doesn't realize it until his pants are open all the way, until that hand's closed tight around him—

He cries out against Jeremiah's mouth, cries out and moves in a sharp helpless wave, shoving his cock up through the circle of Jeremiah's fingers. God, it's good. It's so good he can hardly stand it, so good he almost isn't sure he's going to survive it; not just the touch itself, but the way it sweeps through him, the way it washes him clean of everything but Jeremiah.

He tries to sit up a little more, but Jeremiah doesn't let him. Jeremiah pushes him down and holds him there, kisses him until he's gasping—spreads a hand across his heaving chest and keeps it there, and works his cock with long slow strokes until he's shuddering.

And then Jeremiah slows down even more. Touches him softly, lightly, every tiny brush of his hand throwing sparks. Markus's eyes are hot, stinging; it's like he's breathed all the air in the room, there isn't any left; he's pinned there on the incandescent edge, and—

And there's nothing he can do about it. There's nothing he can do about it. Jeremiah will tip him over it, when it's time, and all Markus has to do is let him.

He squeezes his eyes shut, wild, utterly overwhelmed with gratitude. And Jeremiah kisses him again, long and sweet, murmurs, "There you go, Markus. Give it to me. Just for a minute, give it to me. All right?"

"Jeremiah," Markus says against his mouth, and kisses back, and lets go.

Jeremiah doesn't seem to be expecting Markus to pull him into the bed, after, just like he wasn't expecting to be kissed.

But the kissing worked out all right in the end. So Markus decides—to hell with it. And he hangs on, doesn't let go of Jeremiah's arm even as he's rolling himself back to the far side of the bed, until Jeremiah has to set a knee on the edge.

"Markus—"

"Come on," Markus murmurs. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye on me."

"Yeah," Jeremiah says, "and I was managing just fine from the chair."

"That's my chair," Markus says. "I know _exactly_ how uncomfortable it is."

He tugs harder. Jeremiah gives in with a sigh, a roll of the eyes—a glorious show of reluctant resignation. Probably meant as cover for the uncertain way he's letting his weight settle into place next to Markus, gingerly, like Markus is going to come to his senses any second and roll Jeremiah out onto the floor.

But Jeremiah is warm. Markus turns his face into the side of Jeremiah's shoulder with a sigh, and discovers distantly that now that he's let them fall shut, his eyes feel increasingly impossible to open again.

"Didn't do you."

"What's that?"

"Didn't—" and then Markus has to yield to a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn. "Didn't do you. I should've—"

"Gears," Jeremiah murmurs to him, scolding.

Markus has no counter-argument. He has to settle for making a soft grumbling sound into Jeremiah's arm to register his displeasure.

"It's fine," Jeremiah says, and his voice is softer this time. "You can owe me one," and there's the barest gentle brush of a touch, warm and careful and even a little bit tender, against Markus's forehead, in the instant just before he falls very thoroughly and undeniably asleep.


End file.
